Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Made Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier
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21 from the Sindhind to develop algebra: Lyons, House of Wisdom, 72-73.
21 Indian numerals . . . compatible with Islamic theology: Ibid., 73, 175; and Gari, “Arabic Treatises.”
21 Medical knowledge came to Baghdad from the Persians: Lyons, House of Wisdom, 86.
21 paper-making was brought there by Chinese prisoners of war: Ibid., 57.
21 Venice . . . ideas, as well as spices, throughout the Middle Ages: McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe.
21 When the Spanish retook Toledo . . . its classics into Latin: Bakhit, History of Humanity, 115.
21 crusaders captured Antioch . . . Arabic medical and science texts: Lyons, House of Wisdom, 104.
21 In the Islamic cities of Spain . . . transferred to Christendom: Ibid., 142.
22 Those texts came to the new universities . . . built on Greek and Islamic philosophy: Knowles, “The Evolution of Medieval Thought.”
22 In monasteries, Benedictine monks . . . like the waterwheel: Lucas, “Role of the Monasteries”; Baumol, “Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive.”
22 Merchants congregated in trade fairs . . . vulnerable infrastructure: Milgrom et al., “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade.”
22 Eventually urban powerhouses . . . armed artisans or mercenaries: Pirenne, Medieval Cities and Murray, Bruges: Cradle of Capitalism.
22 The growth of cities run by merchants . . . princes and monarchs: de Long and Shleifer, “Princes and Merchants.”
22 These dense places . . . knowledge of the East: McNeill, Western Civilization, 331.
22 The commercial cities developed the legal rules: Ibid., 327-28.
22 the Great Revolt . . . first modern republic: Geyl, Revolt of the Netherlands.
23 When American ships ... on the world stage: Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 9.
23 Between 1894 . . . Korea: Iriye, “Japan’s Drive to Great-Power Status.”
23 By the middle of the twentieth century... American counterparts: Meyer, Japan, 261.
23 The first contacts . . . nearby island of Tanegashima: McClain, Japan, 2.
23 Over the next three hundred years . . . Western learning: Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 107-8.
23 In 1590, Portuguese Jesuits . . . printing press in Nagasaki: Boorstin, Discoverers, 508.
23 Forty-six years later . . . profitable trading opportunity: Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 16.
23 Western medicine entered Japan . . . East India Company’s resident physician: Ibid., 37-38, 40.
23 Soon Japanese students . . . medical techniques to Japan: Ibid., 38.
23 By the start of the nineteenth century . . . Eastern herbs to produce unconsciousness: Stevens, “Anaesthesia in Japan.”
23 In addition to Western medicine ... sunglassess through Nagasaki: Sugita, Western Science in Japan, 17.
24 In 1720, an inquisitive shogun started allowing Western books in Japan: Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 51.
24 When the American gunboats ... trained in the “Dutch Studies”: Morris-Suzuki, Technological Transformation, 62.
24 In 1855, the Dutch gave . . . Nagasaki Naval Training Station: Murdoch, Tokugawa Epoch, 616.
25 Bangalore does have . . . Delhi: India, Government of, “Climatological Data of Important Cities.”
25 Infosys was founded . . . consulting: “Who We Are,” Infosys, www.infosys.com/about/who-we-are/pages/history.aspx.
25 educating thousands ... Ivy League school: Schlosser, “Harder than Harvard.”
27 A 10 percent increase . . . between 1980 and 2000: Author’s calculations using data from U. S. Census Bureau, 1980 Census and 2000 Census.
27 As the share . . . 22 percent: Author’s calculations using data from U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2008, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts, Gross Domestic Product by Metropolitan Area, 2008.
28 Between 1970 and 2000 . . . by 37 percent: Author’s calculations using county-level census data from Haines, “Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790-2002.”
28 For each worker . . . 8 percent higher earnings: Card, “Estimating the Return to Schooling.”
28 extra year of schooling . . . gross domestic product: Barro and Lee, “International Data on Educational Attainment”; and Maddison, “Statistics on World Population.”
28 The connection . . . since the 1970s: Goldin and Katz, Race Between Education and Technology.
28 In 1980, men with four years of college . . . nearly 70 percent: Economic Report of the President 1997, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, Feb. 1997, www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy98/pdf/erp.pdf.
28 One school of thought . . . need for unskilled labor: Acemoğlu, “Why Do New Technologies Complement Skills?” 1055-58; Doms et al., “Workers, Wages, and Technology,” 253-54.
29 Many studies have shown . . . corn and computers: Nelson and Phelps, “Investment in Humans,” 70; Schultz, “Ability to Deal with Disequilibria,” 834; and Krueger, “How Computers Have Changed the Wage Structure.”
29 A second school . . . less-skilled workers: Sachs and Shatz, “U.S. Trade with Developing Countries.”
29 A century ago, when New York . . . horse farm: “Birth of the University,” History of Stanford.
29 “life is . . . useful career”: Elliott, Stanford University, 88-89.
30 Stanford University’s first . . . wasn’t even eighteen: Aitken, Continuous Wave, 103.
30 But his backers . . . reliable wireless service: Ibid., 104-5.
30 But instead of giving up . . . Federal Telegraph Corporation: Sturgeon, “How Silicon Valley Came to Be,” 19.
30 Lee De Forest . . . first vacuum tube: Ibid., 24.
30 another product . . . transistor: Ibid., 17.
30 Even after . . . talented students: Ibid., 20-23.
30 Stanford’s first . . . at FTC: Ibid., note 15; and “Electrical Engineering Timeline,” Stanford Engineering, http://ee.stanford.edu/timeline.php.
30 Two Danes . . . Magnavox: Sturgeon, “How Silicon Valley Came to Be,” 30.
30 Another FTC employee . . . Fisher Research Laboratories: Ibid., 32.
30 Litton Industries . . . FTC offspring: Ibid., 32-34.
31 But no FTC employee . . . come to the valley: Gillmor, Fred Terman at Stanford. The Nobel citation credits the two men with the “discovery of the transistor effect,” but there is some controversy over this (see R. G. Arns, “The other transistor: early history of the metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor”).
31 William Shockley . . . shared the Nobel Prize in Physics: Shurkin, Broken Genius.
31 In one notorious incident . . . hand on a pin: Ibid., 176.
32 eight of his best young scientists . . . to form Intel: “Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation,” Encyclopædia Britannica.
32 Another left . . . next wave of innovators: “‘Fairchildren’ Who Came to Dominate the World of Technology,” Financial Times (London), Oct. 31, 2007, Business Life.
32 Two former Hewlett-Packard . . . Apple Computer: “Apple Inc.” Encyclopædia Britannica.
32 A former Apple employee started eBay: “Who We Are: History,” eBay, www.ebayinc.com/milestones; and Viegas, Pierre Omidyar, 34.
32 Both Yahoo! and Google: “The History of Yahoo!—How It All Started ...” Yahoo! Media Relations (Yahoo! 2005), http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html; and “Google Milestones,” Corporate Information, Google, 2010, www.google.com/corporate/history.html.
32 A few companies . . . Santa Clara County: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2008 Data Profile for County of Santa Clara, generated using American FactFinder.
33 Even after the housing bust . . . buy a home: National Association of Realtors, Median Sales Price of Existing Single-Family Homes for Metropolitan Areas for First Quarter 2010, www.realtor.org/research/research/metroprice.
33 Only 22.2 percent . . . college degree: U.S. Census Bureau, American C
ommunity Survey, 2008 Data Profile for City of Palo Alto, generated using American FactFinder.
33 The Valley’s other major drawback: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2008, www.census.gov/econ/cbp.
33 single-industry cities ... new ideas and companies: Glaeser et al., “Growth in Cities,” 1132, 1150-51.
33 Jane Jacobs . . . old ideas: Jacobs, Economy of Cities, 47-53.
33 Michael Bloomberg . . . could help them: “Biography,” Office of the Mayor, New York City, 2010, www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.e985cf5219821bc3f7393cd401c789a0.
33 Facebook started . . . wanted to share: Nguyen, “Online Network Created by Harvard Students Flourishes.”
33 When eBay ... American public: “Meet Meg Whitman,” Meg 2010: A New California (Meg Whitman for Governor of California, 2010), www.megwhitman.com/aboutMeg.php.
34 One experiment . . . any other sort of interaction: Rocco, “Trust Breaks Down.”
35 The very first . . . bicyclist: Strube, “What Did Triplett Really Find?” 271.
35 He noted that . . . another child: Triplett, “Pacemaking and Competition,” 510
35 Modern statistical evidence . . . occupational niche: Rosenthal, et al., “Agglomeration, Labor Supply, and the Urban Rat Race.”
35 In one major chain . . . productive peers.: Mas and Moretti, “Peers at Work.”
35 Telephone calls . . . .over the phone: Gaspar and Glaeser, “Information Technology.”
35 more electronic communications: Ibid., 152.
35 In the average county . . . 30.6 percent of adults have college degrees: Author’s calculations, taking the average of the share of the population with bachelor’s degrees for counties with a population density of less than one person per acre and those with more than two people per acre. County-level Census data from Haines, “Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790-2002.”
36 Innovations cluster... continents and seas: Paraphrase of Glaeser et al., “Growth in Cities,” 1127.
36 In 1993 . . . geographically close: Jaffe et al., “Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers.”
36 More recent ... geographically close: Maurseth and Verspagen, “Knowledge Spillovers in Europe,” 542.
36 Recent research . . . in their industry: Lychagin et al., “Spillovers in Space.”
36 For over a century . . . face-to-face meetings: Gaspar and Glaeser, “Information Technology,” 136-37.
37 business travel has soared: Ibid., 149.
37 Facebook is another . . . effective: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x/full.
37 Studies find that Facebook . . . real-life conversation: http://web.ebscohost.com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&hid=107&sid=8532ef3f-5e9d-48f8-98ec-d2a5e260d6e8%40sessionmgr111.
37 Moreover, the initial idea . . . Harvard students: Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires.
38 Gutenberg . . . world center of printing: Howard, The Book.
39 The city’s rich . . . for its presses: Ibid.
39 In later centuries . . . into its port: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 441.
39 Martin Luther . . . “act of grace”: Couch et al., Information Technologies, 124.
39 “Between 1517 . . . significance of the Press”: A. G. Dickens, quoted in Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, 97.
39 Protestantism has an inherent superiority . . . global commerce: Glaeser and Scheinkman, “Neither a Borrower.”
39 The great Dutch revolt . . . local Catholic church: Geyl, Revolt of the Netherlands, 93.
40 In 1581 . . . the island of Manhattan: “Netherlands,” Encyclopædia Britannica.
40 Act of Abjuration: Zagorín, Rebels and Rulers, vol. 2, 118.
CHAPTER 2: WHY DO CITIES DECLINE?
41 The corner of... fourth-largest city: I was inspired to visit this block by a superb article: McWhirter, “Homes Give Way to Urban Prairie.”
41 Between 1950 and 2008 . . . half the U.S. average: In 2008, Detroit’s population was 777,493, which is 42 percent of the 1950 population of 1,849,568 and a loss of over 1 million people. Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities”; and U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2008 Data Profile for City of Detroit, generated using American FactFinder. According to the same American Community Survey, 33.3 percent of people who live in Detroit have incomes that for the last twelve months have been below poverty level; and median family income in Detroit is $32,798, which is 52 percent of the nation’s median family income of $63,366. U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2008 Data Profile for City of Detroit and for the United States, generated using American FactFinder. In 2009, Detroit city’s average unemployment rate was 25 percent, 2.7 times the U.S. average 2009 rate of 9.3 percent. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, “Unemployment Rates for the 50 Largest Cities, 2009,” www.bls.gov/lau/lacilg09.htm, and Statistics from the Current Population Survey, “Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population, 1940 to Date,” www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1.pdf.
41 In 2009, the city’s unemployment rate: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, “Unemployment Rates for the 50 Largest Cities, 2009,” www.bls.gov/lau/lacilg09.htm.
41 In 2008 . . . New York City’s: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2008, Sept. 2009, www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_08.html.
41 Detroit was unique . . . since the bust: Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, July 21, 2010.
42 Six of the sixteen . . . since that year: Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities,” table 1, “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places Over 100,000, Ranked by July 1, 2009 Population,” April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2009 (SUB-EST2009-01), www.census.gov/popest/cities/SUB-EST2009.html.
42 Skilled cities have been more successful: Glaeser and Saiz, “Skilled City,” 47.
42 only 11 percent of Detroit’s adults: U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2008 Data Profile for City of Detroit, generated using American FactFinder.
42 People and firms . . . comprise the Rust Belt: Glaeser and Tobio, “Rise of the Sunbelt.”
43 New York’s garment industry: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census 1950, www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1950.html.
43 In 1900, all twenty: Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities.” Here are the twenty largest cities and one of their associated waterways: New York, NY, Eastern seaboard; Chicago, IL, Lake Michigan; Philadelphia, PA, Eastern seaboard; St. Louis, MO, Mississippi River; Boston, MA, Eastern seaboard; Baltimore, MD, Chesapeake Bay; Cleveland, OH, Lake Erie; Buffalo, NY, Erie Canal; San Francisco, CA, San Francisco Bay; Cincinnati, OH, Ohio River; Pittsburgh, PA, Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio Rivers; New Orleans, LA, Mississippi Delta; Detroit, MI, Detroit River; Milwaukee, WI, Lake Michigan; Washington, DC, Potomac River; Newark, NJ, Newark Bay; Jersey City, NJ, Hudson River; Louisville, KY, Ohio River; Minneapolis, MN, Mississippi River; and Providence, RI, Eastern seaboard.
43 Detroit was founded . . . and the United States: Hudgins, “Evolution of Metropolitan Detroit.”
44 In 1816, it cost as much: George Rogers Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 132-33.
44 cannons than with canals: Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, 22-23.
44 Before he became the president . . . Potowmack Canal Company: Achenbach, The Grand Idea.
44 The great liquid highway... east-west transport: George Rogers Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 33-34, 197.
44 Cities soon sprang up . . . plied the canal: Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, 359-61.
45 The need to lift . . . transform cities: Ibid., 362.
45 From 1850 until 1970 . . . along that route: Data from 1900-1980: Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities.” In 1860, the cities that shared this distinction were, in order of population, New York, NY; Brooklyn, NY; New Orleans, LA; St. Louis, MO; Chicago, IL; and Buffalo, NY. In 1960, they were New York, NY;
Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Cleveland, OH; and St. Louis, MO.
45 the city’s land market exploded: Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago.
45 Between 1850 . . . 1.5 million inhabitants: According to the 2008 American Community Survey, 10.8 percent of Detroit’s population over twenty-five has a college degree. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2008 Data Profile for City of Detroit, generated using American FactFinder.
45 In 1889, Iowa corn yields: United States Department of Agriculture—National Agricultural Statistics Service, Crops by State (95111), cn186629.csv, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1269.
45 Cities like America’s Porkopolis . . . by nearby farmers: Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis.
45 Chicago’s stockyards . . . kept them cool: Williams, Food in the United States, 87.
46 from 21,000 to 206,000 people: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, Release Date June 2010; and Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities.”
46 By 1907 . . . New York or London: Nolan, “How the Detroit River Shaped Lives and History.”
46 Liverpool and Manchester were tied together: David Elystan Owen, Canals to Manchester.
46 Canal building during the Georgian era: Minchinton, “Bristol.”
46 rail would complement waterways: Lay, Ways of the World, 138.
46 Detroit Dry Dock . . . sophisticated engine production: Nevins and Hill, Ford, vol. 1, 84-85.
47 ready access to wood . . . place to build cars: Ibid., 515.
47 Both carriages . . . nearby Flint: Pelfrey, Billy, Alfred, and General Motors, 28-29, covers carriages and Durant’s involvement therein.
47 The basic science of the automobile . . . mass scale: Nevins and Hill, Ford, vol. 1, 125-35.
47 In general, there’s . . . growth of a region: Glaeser et al., “Clusters of Entrepreneurship.”
47 After Ford left . . . experimenting with engines: Nevins and Hill, Ford, vol. 1, 87.
47 neighbor’s Westinghouse threshing machine: Ibid.
47 working on Westinghouse engines: Ibid.
47 a proto-tractor: Ibid., 112.